Introduction
Brazil (Portuguese Brasil, German Brasilien), largest country
in South America, has been a destination of German emigrants from 1824.

Political Divisions
Being a Federal Republic since 1889, Brazil is currently divided among
26 states and one Federal District.

At the time of the first German settlements in 1824-25, Brazil was an Empire,
divided into Provinces, administered by their presidents, who were assigned
by an act of the Emperor. One of these provinces was the Province of Rio
Grande do Sul. The western borders of such province were rather volatile
during that period and the years to come. This would affect directly some
German immigrants who went to settle in those unpopulated areas.

Rio de Janeiro is no doubt the best known of the Brazilian states, because
of its capital also called Rio de Janeiro. The city of Petrópolis
("The Imperial City") is located in the mountains, one hour and half by
car from Rio de Janeiro. It was home to the Emperor Dom Pedro II
in 1889, when Brazil was declared a Republic. The city of Rio de Janeiro
was capital of Brazil until 1961. The state is known for its beautiful
beaches.

The state of São Paulo is southwest
of Rio de Janeiro. The state has a coastline and a port called Santos.
The city of São Paulo is one of the chief cities of the entire country
and of the world (more than 12 million inhabitants in the Metropolitan
Area). It is Brazil's financial heart nowadays. The section of São
Paulo called Santo Amaro has many German descendants.

The state of Paraná is immediately
south of São Paulo, with a smaller
coastline and the ports of Paranaguá and Antonina. The state capital
is Curitiba, located 100 km from the coast. It is known for
its cleanness and higher standards of living, in terms of ecology. The
city of Ponta Grossa is slightly to the northwest, 80 km from Curitiba.
Both Curitiba and Ponta Grossa hold a lot of German descendants, together
with Italians, Poles and Ukrainians.

The next state to the south is the short, wide state of Santa
Catarina which has its coastal capital at Florianópolis,
located on the beautiful Santa Catarina island. Florianopolis is a Portuguese
colony. The German settlements occurred to the northwest of the state capital.
Cities like Joinville, Blumenau, Jaraguá do Sul, São Bento,
Itajaí and smaller ones surrounding them have a great number
of German descendants. Blumenau has a huge Oktober Fest that attracts over
a million Brazilians.

The southernmost state of Brazil is Rio Grande
do Sul immediately south of Santa Catarina, bordered in the west
by Argentina and south by Uruguay. The Sinos River Valley cities are the
cradle of the German immigration to Brazil: São Leopoldo, Novo
Hamburgo, Taquara, Dois Irmãos, Estancia Velha, Ivoti and many others.

These are the main regions of German settlement in Brazil.

Religious Divisions
Nowadays, Brazil is considered a Roman Catholic country, yet Evangelicals
are said to constitute 25%, and there are regions such as Bahia, where
animism is very important. There is religious freedom in the
country.

During the 1820s, the official religion and the only
acceptable one under the Imperial Constitution was the Roman Catholic
Church. As many of the German settlers belonged to Protestant
churches, this posed a problem in the provinces, considering that
the immigrants had been promised religious freedom.

Dioceses and Archdioceses:

History
German immigration to Brazil started in 1824 -- just after Brazil won
independence from Portugal -- as a result of Brazilian Emperor Dom
Pedro I's (1798-1834) need to populate uninhabited
regions of the huge country. Such regions were being disputed with
neighbouring countries such as Argentina and Paraguay. Uruguay was
just becoming independent. Those countries were by then former
Spanish colonies, as all of South America was becoming independent,
and all of them were interested in receiving European knowledge,
expertise and labor.

Some Brazilian states received higher inflows of Germans than
others. Such was the case in Rio Grande do Sul, where the first
"wave" of immigrants was settled in the 1820s.
In 1827, a group of Germans migrated to Brazil from the region of
Trier.
This was the first official German migration to Brazil. Part
of this group (mainly Catholic married men) came to the farm called
"Fazenda Guarei," which is today a small town in the state of
São Paulo called Guarei. These Germans are considered the
founders of Guarei.

A second "wave"
went to Santa Catarina in the 1850s, but also to Rio de Janeiro,
in smaller number, mainly to a city called Petropolis, where the
Emperor Dom Pedro II's summer house (nowadays the Imperial Museum)
was located. Other German immigration waves occurred in the 1890s,
as well as after the First and Second World War. The latter emigres were
not necessarily only refugees, but also people who were tired of
the war. They had different destinations: to the states of Sao
Paulo, to Paraná, and to the other Brazilian states.

In the mid-to-late-19th century, many
German-Russians
migrated to the
state of Paraná, more specifically, to near Ponta Grossa
city, in Campos Gerais region (a savannah). After a failure in wheat
cultivation, many re-emigrated to
Argentina
or the
USA.

On August 12, 1950, five hundred
Donauschwaben
families were invited to immigrate to the region of Entre Rios
(Portuguese for between the rivers) in the highlands (1200 meters
altitude) of the state of Paraná. The first settlers arrived at the
port of Santos, Brazil in
June of 1951, settling in Entre Rios with the intent of growing wheat. The area
was not prepared for cultivation, there were no buildings at all, nor were
settlers exactly welcomed. Rattlesnakes roamed the country.
Every couple was assigned 15 hectares of land, with an additional 8 for
each son or 4 for each daughter, and a house of either 72 or 42 square
meters depending on family size. House and land were assigned on a loan basis;
repayment to occur in about ten years time.

The first church was erected in 1957-8. The chief town is Vitoria, others in order
of their founding are Jordaozinho, Cochoeire, Socorro and Samambaia. The
towns were named for the previous owners of the land, which the settlers
were helped to purchase by the Swiss charitable organization Europahilfe.

During the 1960's, many of the settlers returned to Germany or Austria.
Forty-two families left in 1963 alone.
As of 1992, only about 5% of the original houses still remained, the rest
having been replaced by more permanent structures. About 2,000 of the settlers
and their descendants still make their homes here, continuing to speak the
donauschwäbische dialect.

Paraná and Sao Paulo have also seen a large number of German
immigrants. Through the years, the descendants of these immigrants
have spread out to other Brazilian regions, yet the states of Rio
Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná are known for their
concentrations of German descendants, while in other states there
are rather "pockets" of them in cities such as Sao Paulo (capital
of Sao Paulo state) and Petrópolis (Rio de Janeiro state).

Brandt, Ed, et al.,
Germanic Genealogy,
[contains information about Germanic research worldwide, including
South America. Available in the US from the Germanic Genealogy Society,
P.O. Box 16312, St. Paul, MN 55116-0312]

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